Waxing Lyrical

THE newest craze to rage through New York is much much more than a bikini wax. All those ladies-who-lunch who wouldn't have been seen dead without a Brazilian last summer have now decided to stick Swarovski crystals where once there was nothing. "It looks fantastic," says Cindy Barshop , owner of Madison Avenue's Completelybare salon, who is credited with starting the craze. "Everybody's doing it. I'm opening another venue to cope with demand." The story goes that a rock star client came to Cindy last August with a request for something really special for her wedding day. And together they came up with 'Completelybare With A Flair'. "It's just crazy," goes on Cindy. "We're doing about 300 a week and have a waiting list of two to three weeks." The procedure costs $105 and involves a full wax before crystals are applied in the design of the customer's choice. "We have lips, butterflies and hearts but we tend to go on the shape of the customer," says Cindy. "If they're tall and thin, a square design looks better, but for a wider figure, we go for an elongated pattern." So popular is the trend that some other New York salons are insisting that they first came up with the idea. But Cindy is sure of where, and with whom, it all began. "Ask any fashion editor in New York and they'll tell you where the first press release came from," she says. "And now I'm thinking up whatever's gonna come next…"